Price Lies

He repeatedly lied and made false promises about what the American Health Care Act would do. He told CNN that the bill would “absolutely not” result in millions of Americans losing Medicaid. (The Congressional Budget Office evaluated a previous version of the bill and estimated that it would cut $880 billion from the Medicaid program.)

He told NBC that the goal of the Republican plan is to “make certain that every single person has health coverage.” (The CBO also estimates that the AHCA would cause 14 million people to lose their Medicaid coverage by 2026.)

He has described it as protecting people with preexisting conditions and reducing deductibles, while it does neither of those things. (Most midlevel plans sold on the marketplace have significant deductibles, which can be as high as $6,000.)

Nonpartisan analysis of the bill shows that none of these claims is true. The Republican plan would result in millions of Americans losing Medicaid coverage. Passing the bill would reduce rather than increase how many people have coverage.

The most recent CBO estimate predicts that 24 million Americans would lose coverage under AHCA. The majority of those people losing coverage would be Medicaid enrollees, but 2 million Americans would also lose individual plans. An additional 7 million Americans would lose coverage, as the CBO expects the Republican plan would encourage some workplaces to drop their offerings.